Disclaimer: I own the original characters, nothing else.
Timmy
1- The problem with gangsters
Timmy is from Hoenn. Timmy is a Pokemon trainer, one of the best even. But Timmy doesn't care. Timmy doesn't like the Pokemon league and the way they seem to run the whole country, he doesn't think an association like that should be given that much power. The league doesn't like Timmy either though.
Timmy is 19, he's tall and lean and wears long faded jeans and a black t-shirt that fits him perfectly, blue eyes like ice and messy hair that is black like the night. He has a belt with six pokeballs on it but he uses them as little as possible. People in Hoenn say that his pokemon are unbeatable, although he has never made an effort to train them and has never entered the pokemon league. He has a Houndoom called Abel, an Umbreon called Night, a Salamence called Jay, a Dodrio called Pacey Pete, an Espeon called Astra and a very special Scyther called Samurai.
Timmy also carries an Uzi, he doesn't want to carry a gun, but it became necessary after he didn't appear in the league last year. It left a few people thinking that he owed them something and they were going to go to some pretty big lengths to get it. There are some crazy people in Hoenn.
But Timmy isn't in Hoenn now; he's in Kanto, walking through Cerulean city on a very cold night in December. He doesn't want to be walking around Cerulean in the middle of the night, he doesn't even want to be in Kanto, but his friends decided that he had to go and find Markey because 'it was your idea for him to go there'. He doesn't remember it happening like that but he doesn't remember the actual reason he left, so he came to Kanto. Mistake. Not only are most of the cities in Kanto total dives; how is he supposed to find one person in a whole country anyway? Still, he's wandering around the back streets of Cerulean, looking for a mobster called 'Big Benny'. Timmy is glad that he's carrying a gun; he's nearly been shot already by one of Benny's contacts. Oh well he thinks, better than getting butt-raped in Neon.
Big Benny's haunt is apparently a bar on the east side of town called Diamond. Timmy thinks this sounds like a pretty camp name for the haunt of a big time gangster, but it also means that he's a classy gangster, and they're the ones that you want to watch out for. Timmy stops in a bus shelter at the gym and looks at a map. Diamond appears to be in a part of town that's got a dress code, which isn't likely to be jeans and a duffel jacket from a sale in Pewter department store. It also appeared to be 5 miles away, Bitch, and Cerulean city seems to have a shortage of late buses, Bitch, again.
- - - - -
"This is the worst place in the world," A younger Timmy whined, "I wanna go home!"
"Quiet Timothy, if you keep yelling like that you'll scare all the pokemon away." Timmy's dad scolded. To him, pokemon training was everything; he wanted his son to be a great trainer, just like he was.
That didn't mean Timmy appreciated his lessons on catching cave pokemon. Sure, he liked pokemon as much as the next kid, but he didn't want to spend his weekends crawling through gaps in caves that weren't much bigger than he was, looking for zubats and aron.
Timmy was sulking about five steps back from his dad, who didn't seem to notice as he still purposefully strode through the moss and bat shit, until he stepped on a loose rock and weakened its hold, as Timmy stepped on it, it gave way completely and dropped Timmy 30 feet down to a chamber below.
Timmy woke up with a warm tongue licking his face. "Go away Blaze!" he told the domesticated Growlithe his dad brought back from Kanto.
"Vee Vee!"
"Huh?"
"Vee!"
Timmy opened his eyes and saw "an eevee? I didn't think they lived in Hoenn." That was his last thought before he passed out again.
His dad found him an hour later, and the eevee refused to leave him alone.
- - - - -
This is the worst place in the world he thinks as he walks towards the classy east side through the not so classy south end. Timmy sees the famous rivers that run through the city. He remembers seeing rivers like that on Cerulean travel guides; those ones were all sparkly and clear so you could see the happy goldeen and magikarp swimming in them. He thought that that was what it was probably like in the nice part of town, but in the slightly shabbier end of town the rivers and lakes gradually turn into poisonous holes when people who can't afford flushing toilets empty their septic tanks and you can see the occasional dead seaking floating by. Timmy half expected to see a gyrados emerge from the water and eat one of the young children playing football in the street alongside a canal.
Timmy thinks that the government should do more to help these people. The league? They wouldn't help an old lady across the street if it didn't benefit them and they thought that no one was going find out. Then he starts to feel sorry for the people living in these slums because they will never be given an opportunity to get out. Not everyone needs one though he thinks; Markey worked his way out of poverty, that's something that he had always admired about him. Markey grew up in a place like this, and he wasn't ever given a chance, he made his own. He was one of the children Timmy can see playing by the canal, not liking their life by accepting it anyway because they haven't got anything else. Markey didn't accept it though, he knew that he could do better, so he cleaned himself up and went out to take on the world He had it tough for a couple of years, almost gave up and came back home, but he didn't, and he came through. Now he's wealthy man, like all the good trainers are. It made knowing that he could have got in trouble with some people in this town feel even worse, because Timmy had never had to work for any of his opportunities, they just happened to him, but Markey worked almost every day in his life, and could got it all screwed up for him as soon as it had worked.
Timmy looks at his watch. It reads 22:27. Big Benny had better still be there when Timmy arrived, or he was going to come back and shoot this dank hole up. He'd walked through these shoddy ghettos/projects for three hours, is pissed, and all the people looking at him weirdly scares him just enough to make him dangerous. He put the hood up on his jacket an hour ago because it makes him look like a drug dealer, which is probably far more common in this part of town than a clean person wearing relatively new clothes. Drug dealers also tend to carry guns; he figures that this will be enough to stop him from getting mugged. Yep, the worst place in the world.
By the time he reaches even the right general area, his watch reads 23:16, 14 minutes before the bars close but he can see the sign from way off, so he can get there in time. On the way in, he stops off at a 24-hour shop and buys some more appropriate clothes, smart trousers and blue and white vertically striped shirt. He styles his hair in a public toilet and withdraws his espeon round the back.
"Ok Astra, they're probably gonna have a metal detector on the door so I want you to take my gun and teleport it to me once I'm inside. Then keep a watch of what's happening in there and teleport me out if it gets ugly Ok?" he explains along with hand signals to help get his point across, he knows that his pokemon can understand him perfectly but he does it anyway, he even taught himself basic pokemon language in case he needs it; he never has.
"Peon!" Astra happily replies.
"For real, I'll see you later." And he goes.
The Diamond is the sort of place that Timmy pictured movie stars hanging out in. But it also gives off a shady aura, like a casino. Hey look, he thinks, it's Brad Pitt sitting next to Al Capone. From the outside, it's a rounded building on a glitzy street corner, and is covered in lights. Timmy was right in expecting a metal detector, and two hired muscles. In Timmy's experience with bouncers and bodyguards, it's not always the big muscle headed ones which are dangerous, but the quick or especially skilled ones, probably save them for more important jobs. The inside is even more dazzling than the neon plastered exterior. It's a giant circular room, with a raised platform in the centre and golden and white lights shining on every corner. The bar is 30 feet long and the barmen are all dressed in the same white shirts, red and white stripy waistcoats, red bow ties, neat hair worn in a side parting immaculate black trousers and spotless black shoes. Timmy would have bet his life that they all knew every cocktail in the world. Tables are littered around the circumference of the upper level, the walls draped in red material and illuminated with golden lights. The upper level was a huge platform, about 40 feet in diameter, with translucent yellow glass making up a privacy shield, Timmy was guessing that this was where Benny slinked around. Timmy feels for his waistband and finds his gun there. Takes a breath, and walks upstairs.
Big Benny is sitting at the far end of the platform drinking a whiskey sour, he is surrounded by two bodyguards sitting on the table behind him, two in front and two more standing next to him, he and the man he's talking to don't seem to notice. He is quite old, Timmy thinks probably well into his sixties, like most of the other people on the top level he is wearing a double breasted, light coloured suit, with a bowler hat laying on the table in front of him. People are occupying all of the tables on the floor, Timmy thinks that some are important but most of them are probably just off-shift bodyguards, he can see which are which as they notice him standing at the top of the stairs.
The muscles nearby him all immediately stand up in front of him, then all of the ones further away start to stand up, and finally, to complete the effect, all of the sound slowly drains out of the room.
"Can we help you?" The one at the front asks. He looks like his name should be Carlo.
"I want to see Big Benny" Timmy calmly replies, although he's secretly shitting himself, he doesn't want to appear intimidated. Some of the thugs laugh.
"Uh, sorry," says Carlo, "you don't just get to see the don"
The Don, huh?
"Stand down Franco." Comes a voice from the back of the room.
Pretty close, but hey, Carlo? Franco? All the same really.
The muscles part to form a path to voice at the back.
"This guy's got nuts just to come up here, so let him talk to me and see if I'll answer him, right Mr. err?" Benny let Timmy finish the sentence.
"Reins, Tim Reins."
"Mr. reins, come talk to me."
Then Franco pipes up again and releases a huge machamp from its ball. "You, touch the Don, and he'll touch you."
"Really?" Timmy says half sarcastically, and half acting bored.
"Huh?"
Timmy walked down the aisle of bodyguards, meeting as many of them in the eye as he could, and sitting down casually opposite Benny.
"Reins," Benny says "same one as-"
"The trainer." Timmy finishes.
"Yeah"
"Well the son of."
"I knew your father Timmy, he was a good man. That was a terrible accident that happened to him." Benny says with all of that fake compassion that gangsters are so good a t putting on.
"Five bullets in the back isn't an accident." Timmy comes back with, with no attempt to hide his annoyance at the mention of his father's death.
"Yeah, well, what can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for a guy called Markey White. He was in Cerulean and just disappeared, I asked around and got lead back to you."
"Who gave you my name?" Benny asks, annoyed.
"A little pidgey. So do you know him?"
"You know, I think the name has come up at some point. I think it was doing business with the Saffron underground."
Great, the Saffron underground, the one place that could bee worse than the Cerulean dives.
"Who should I contact there?"
" Reggie Sanders. He pretty much runs it over there."
" Thanks, you've been very Helpful."
Timmy gets up and leaves the table, he is halfway through the corridor when he turns and faces Big Benny.
"When you found Markey, did you rough him up, or hand him straight over to someone?"
"You're trying my patience Timmy, and I have never met the man."
" Really, cos you see I figured that you're gonna send me to your contact in Saffron so he can kill me, while you keep your interests well protected and away from all the action."
"King!"
The machamp, clearly called King starts running at Timmy, who calmly turns and faces Benny. "If he's alive, I'll find him, and if you've fucked him up, I'll find you and kill you." Benny gives the threat a cold yet uneasy stare. Timmy smiles before turning round, pulling out the Uzi, performing a graceful roll past the machamp, and offloading six or seven shots into its back. The pokemon screams and falls off over the balcony, the thugs all pull out their guns, but Astra teleports Timmy out before they can even take aim.
"Hmm." Timmy says to Astra when they're back outside "Timmy ain't in Saffron"
"Espeon?"
"Why? Because if he was with Reggie sanders, we would have heard from him. Reggie was a guy we used to travel with, but he moved to Kanto a few years back. Which also means that the Cerulean mafia are trying to cover something up."
"Es Espeon Es?"
"We're going to go to Saffron anyway and talk to Reggie. He'll know something."
And then Timmy walks back out into night, thinking about that man.
A/n
When I say 'football', I mean soccer. But I'm not going to call it that because it's a) older than American football, and b) is actually played with your feet.